Bodies in Motion (9 page)

When Michael makes love to his wife, she is almost silent. He encourages Kili to make more noise—it is not as if the rather deaf downstairs neighbor will report them to her parents. But she remains obstinately quiet, and it is only by paying the closest attention that he can chart her response to his touch. At first Michael doesn't mind. Her body does respond; Kili moves eagerly against him, whether below or in front or above. It was enough, for a long time. Lately, though, he has wanted more from his wife. Michael finds himself digging his fingers into her skin, biting at the flesh of her breasts, her stomach. Love bites, he could call them, but is it love that shoves her thighs apart, roughly, that grasps her wrists and pulls them high above her head? Her eyes are dark in the candlelight, and they gaze at him without reproach—and when he bites a nipple hard, Kili arches, twisting underneath him, whimpering slightly. Michael cannot tell whether she enjoys this, or
whether she wants to get away. All he knows is that she will not protest—that for as long as he wants to maul her frail body, she will allow it, will arch to meet his every move; there will be no surrender in her face, her body, until finally he must concede defeat, shuddering to a finish, exhausted.

Michael hates knowing that when they finish, Kili will rise, will shower, will wash away all trace of him. His wife's body will be smooth, dark, and, despite his efforts, entirely unmarked. Perhaps this is the punishment for his guilty pleasure in her subservience, that despite all his efforts, all his fantasies, she remains inaccessible, inviolate. Or perhaps she wants this violence, wants more than he can give her. Michael wonders if Kili wants him to hurt her, if that is what excites her in the end. Michael is afraid to ask why she really married him. He will take what Kili allows him. He will try to convince himself that it is enough.

Chicago, 1966

I SAT IN HARPER LIBRARY, IN A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT FROM ONE OF THE TALL, SLENDER WINDOWS IN THE HIGH HALL, WRITING IN MY
notebook. A few hours before my final physiology exam, but the dutiful delineations of the chambers of the heart had slid into lines that swooped and scanned along the page.

“Poetry. You're writing poetry again?” Sue's eyes were fixed on my page, reading the writing upside down. Her eyes were clear blue, like Lake Michigan on a sunny June day. We could have studied at the lake that day instead of in the library; she'd wanted to. But then I would have gotten nothing done. “This is a sign, Leilani—God's sneaking into your mind and telling us that we need to take a break.”

“God doesn't work that way, Sue.” She'd been my roommate for two years now, and while she appeared a good Catholic on the surface—she even went to Mass with me on Sundays, which made my parents happy—Sue had an oddly irreverent streak in her. It made me uncomfortable, but it was exciting too. That's what it was always like, being around Sue.

“How do you know how God works? Are
you
omniscient and omnipotent?” She grinned across the table at me.

I didn't have an answer to that and just shook my head, smiling.

“There's something I've been wanting to show you. Meaning to for weeks and weeks, actually. C'mon.” She stood up, extending a hand toward me. I stood too, but my hand remained on the page, the pen cupped lightly in my fingers. The words were dancing across the paper.

 

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, MAYBE THREE YEARS OLD, APPA TAUGHT
me to read. He got me interested by reading to me; he'd read almost anything, but mostly I liked fairy tales. Adventure stories, where the prince would have three impossible tasks that he'd somehow manage to fulfill, if he were only strong enough, smart enough, fast enough. And then he'd win the crown, the gold, the princess's undying love. Appa loved stories—mostly he read them to me, but every once in a while, he'd make them up. Those were the best ones—he'd steal bits out of the
Ramayana,
and while he told the story I would lie in his arms and close my eyes and become noble Prince Rama, who went into the dark forest with his beloved wife, Sita, and his loyal brother, Lakshman.

I have five sisters, but I was Appa's favorite—I knew it, though I wasn't supposed to talk about it. He told me so, though he didn't tell me why. Maybe it was because I liked to read. He said that if he didn't have six naughty little girls to feed and clothe and shelter, he might have just stayed at home and read books all day. He got to read at work sometimes too, but that was math, what he taught at the college, what he researched. There wasn't so much time, with six daughters, for curling up in a comfortable chair and reading stories. Maybe he loved me best because I loved the stories too.

Or maybe it was because I loved the adventure stories best. He and Amma had had an adventure themselves—they'd left Ceylon (the land of the demon Ravana in the stories) to travel all the way to England as
math and physics students. They had met at Oxford, met and fallen in love, and had then gone on to America, to become teachers here, to leave everyone else behind. They had been young, and brave, and had been rewarded for their bravery. Appa loved America, and almost everything American. This was a good country, Appa said. Full of decent, hardworking people. And even if white Americans were a little distrustful of foreigners, that was to be expected. The other professors respected Appa, and that was what mattered.

I wanted to have adventures too, to travel to foreign countries, to take on impossible tasks. When I told him this, he never laughed at me. He just held me close, so close that I could feel his heart beating against my shoulder, and then started another story.

 

“I HAVE TO PASS THIS CLASS. MY PARENTS…
”
MY EYES SLID TO THE
heart diagram, and then, treacherously, to the half-finished sonnet. I had my first two stanzas, but it was time for the turn, which was always tricky.

Sue's eyebrows drew together; her forehead crinkled. “You'll pass, you know you will—and if you only get a C, your parents will handle it. You've got plenty of time to pull your grades up; you can still get into med school if you really want to. It's not like you ever do anything but study anyway…no drinking, no drugs…no sex.”

“Sue!” She talked this way in our room all the time, but in the middle of a library…My father could walk by at any minute. He probably wouldn't, but he could. It had been wonderful growing up with a professor for a father and a teacher for a mother when I was younger—most of my friends' mothers didn't even work. I was so proud of them both. It hadn't been so bad, going to the grammar school my mother taught at. But now that I was going to the same college my father taught at, it was not fun. It was not fun at all.

“Okay, okay.” She shrugged. “You could stand to have a good time, you know. Once in a while.”

Sue used to be a frat girl. She didn't join a sorority—hardly anyone did at the U of C—but she did chase frat boys. She usually caught them too. This year had been different; these days, Sue's idea of a good time was to go to a sit-in, a protest against the war. Maybe because those often turned into something else; after one of those, she generally didn't come back to our room at night. She'd invited me to come along, but I could always hear my mother's voice in my head.

Plenty of time for that sort of thing after you're done with your education
. Not that my mother really meant
that
sort of thing, not without the priest's blessing.

“I'm sorry…” I was sorry, I really was.

Sue sighed. “I know, I know. You're a nice Tamil girl.” When she said that, she sounded just like my mother. She'd really been a very patient roommate. Sue had quickly stopped trying to persuade me to have a drink with her; she never said a word as I knelt and said my rosary each night; she had taught me how to cook pot roast, and I had introduced her to chicken curry. The first time she tried it, Sue valiantly stuck it out through the whole meal without a single sip from her glass of water, though her face had gotten pinker and pinker until I had to squeeze my stomach muscles tight to keep from laughing.

She reached out her hand to me again. “Just this one time—trust me. You'll love this! Please?” Her face was fey and sparkling, with her mass of blonde hair tightly curled around her curving cheeks and wicked grin.

I sighed and put my hand in hers, letting her draw me out of the room, down the hall, and into a dark stairwell.

 

WHEN I WAS TEN, I KISSED A BOY.

It was dark in the stairwell. All the other kids were out on the playground; we ate quickly, then ran outside to play four-square and jump rope. I usually ended up running with the boys, playing soccer in the far end of the blacktop. I ran fast, faster than all the girls and most of
the boys. That was why they let me play. I was even faster than some of the sixth-graders who would sometimes come and play with us. It wasn't real soccer—we didn't have goals. But it was fast and fun, trying to get the ball and keep it, dribbling it hard with your feet down the blacktop, sometimes falling and scraping your knees badly, so the nurse had to paint them with iodine. Amma always got mad when that happened, but I didn't care.

That day I wasn't on the blacktop. I was in the stairwell, with Jesús Gonzalez. He had touched my arm at lunch, leaning over the table. He was tall—more than six feet, even though he was only twelve. He wasn't too bright, either; he'd been held back twice, which was why he was in my grade. But he was nice, so when he asked me if he could talk to me after lunch, I said okay. My friends hung around at the table, but I sipped my milk so slowly that eventually they got bored and went out to play. He came back to the table then, and I threw out my trash and followed him up the stairs.

We were kissing in the stairwell, a long, dark length of concrete steps and walls. I was standing on the step above him, almost as tall as he was with the help of the step, and my lips were pressed against his, my hands were wrapped tight into the fabric of his leather jacket. I don't remember what it felt like, kissing Jesús. We kissed for a long time, five minutes, or maybe ten. Just pressing our lips together. Then I remembered something I'd read about, and opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out. Jesús lost his balance and started falling backward down the stairs. I pulled harder at his jacket and tried to lean back, but I started falling too—I heard the awful sound of the jacket tearing. Then he grabbed the rail and straightened up, banging into me, knocking me backward again so I ended up letting go of his jacket and sitting down on the concrete step, banging my elbows hard behind me.

“Aw, God. My jacket! My mom's gonna kill me! She's gonna kill me!”

He looked like he was going to cry. I felt like crying too, but instead I told him to give me the coat. I'd sew it up. I'd fix it. He started to say
no—then slid out of it and handed it to me, ran off to the far end of the blacktop. He must have been cold; it was October, which can be cold in Chicago. He could have stayed in the stairwell.

I took the jacket home that afternoon. I had sewn buttons back onto my skirts before—I was always popping them, running and wrestling with the boys. But the jacket hadn't ripped along a seam; the actual leather had ripped. I did the best I could, choosing dark brown thread that matched the color of the leather, sewing the tiniest stitches. It took more than an hour, but when I was done, it still looked awful. The tears were near the armpits, though—maybe no one would notice. I didn't know what else to do.

I gave Jesús his jacket back the next day, in the morning, while we waited for the bell. He was shivering in a sweater; he'd told his folks that he'd forgotten his jacket at school. He said thanks, quickly, and then he went off to join the boys again. I didn't know what to do; usually we played a little soccer before school started. I just hung out by the stairwell. Eventually, the bell rang and we all went in.

That night, Appa and Amma came up to the room I shared with two of my sisters. Jesús's mother had called; she had immediately noticed the tear, and he had told her everything. Amma started shouting at me, but Appa didn't say anything. He wouldn't look at me. I wanted him to look at me, even if he was shouting while he did. But he wouldn't. He said he'd pay Mrs. Gonzalez for the cost of a replacement jacket. A hundred dollars we couldn't afford easily. Amma always worried about money. When she started shouting again, he said, “Let her be, Shanthi.”

Amma said, “Kissing boys—she's going to ruin herself!”

He said, “She's just a child. She didn't know what she was doing.”

“You're too soft on her—you're always too soft on this one…”

“Please, Shanthi, kunju…”

Amma looked like she wanted to yell some more, but she wouldn't argue with him in front of me. She always waited until she thought we were all asleep before she started shouting. Amma shut her mouth
tight, lips pressed flat and thin. He took her arm and led her downstairs, leaving me alone.

I didn't speak to Jesús again; it was easy, because he avoided me after that. And I stopped playing soccer with the boys. I spent my recess breaks doing homework, and my grades went up.

Appa avoided me too.

 

THE AIR INSIDE THE STAIRWELL WAS CHILL, EVEN IN JUNE. TO MY
surprise, Sue led me up instead of down. We climbed up a flight. At the top of the stairs, there was a door. She pushed it open, and there was sky beyond it.

“They never seem to lock this. I think they've forgotten it's here.” She grinned again as she pulled me out onto the roof. The tiles were slanted, and we balanced precariously, looking down across campus. The business school and the divinity school before us, the social science and humanities buildings to either side. “C'mere…,” she called. She had let go of my hand and walked across the tiles, heading over the peak, toward the view south across the grassy strips of the Midway. She seemed to have no trouble at all walking; my right hand still clung tightly to the doorknob. “Don't worry, it won't lock if you let it go…”

“We're going to get in trouble, Sue.”

She turned and came back across the tiles, looking annoyed. “Please, Leilani. Can't you just enjoy something for once in your life?”

“But it must be against the rules to be on the roof.” If my father finished the exam he was giving and decided to come and take a little nap in the library; he often took naps in Harper…

“We're not hurting anything! I come up here all the time. No one ever notices—nobody ever looks up. Leilani, please. For ten minutes, just relax, okay?”

I felt trapped—I hadn't even come fully out onto the roof. One foot was still on the inside landing, one hand tight to the door. I glanced down at the grass far below; my stomach was churning, and I
felt dizzy. I didn't know why I hadn't already fallen. Sue must have seen that on my face, because suddenly she was beside me, her body blocking my view of the grass, her hands firm around mine.

“Hey. Hey…I'm sorry. I'm so stupid. Sit down. Just slide down…yeah, that's right. Put your head between your knees. Take a deep breath. Just breathe.”

 

WHEN YOU RUN, REALLY RUN, YOU HAVE TO BREATHE PROPERLY.
Little quick breaths will make you light-headed; huge, gasping breaths won't do you much good. You need to breathe normally, just as if you were walking, or standing still. If you can't breathe normally, you need to slow down.

I started really running at fourteen. My breasts were small, and I had long legs. No one was surprised, though my sisters teased me and said I'd never get a date if I acted like a boy. Amma wasn't sure it was a good thing for a girl to do, but Appa said to let me be. That's what he always said about me, and Amma was enough of a traditionalist that, at least in public, his word ruled the house. So I got to do what I wanted, and what I wanted to do at fourteen was keep running.